Archive for the 'How To and What Is' Category

Microsoft Office 2007 Commands

The new ribbon user interface in Office 2007 takes a little getting used to.  Sometimes you just want to do something immediately, but can’t find the command in the ribbon.  “So much for the ribbon making my life easier” you mutter.

Microsoft have a number of interactive guides which let you select the command from the old 2003 Office menu and it will show you where it is located within the ribbon. 

Excel 2003 to Excel 2007 Interactive Command Reference Guide

PowerPoint 2003 to PowerPoint 2007 Interactive Command Reference Guide

Word 2003 to Word 2007 Interactive Command Reference Guide

Why oh why didn’t they put this in the product itself!

Run command on Vista

Turns out some people think the run command has disappeared from Vista – it hasn’t.  :)

The new search bar (in the start panel) will not only search your computer, it will also run any command you type.

However, if you miss seeing the old Run command in your start panel, try this:

Right click on your taskbar; select Properties

Click on the start menu; select customize

Scroll through to the Run Command check box; check it!

Voila

Sort Order of Windows File Open; Save As Dialogs

Somehow, for whatever reason, Windows decided to display files using the last modified date & time as the sorting order for the common open and save as dialogs.

Why?

Good question.

 I have been using Windows since the bad old days of Windows 2.0 (circa 1987) and for the life of me have never had this happen before knowingly or otherwise.  For a period of over a month this really really really annoyed me.

I tried searching but just couldn’t get the right results which showed a solution within the top 4 (yes I am lazy).

Anyways, recently I tried again and found the solution.

If the Ctrl key is pressed when an Explorer window is closed, Windows will save the sort order being used within the closing window and use this to sort the files when the open and save as dialogs are shown.

Thanks to Susan Daffron’s Windows Explorer Weirdness article for the solution.

I have since found other articles and threads which have the solution (why is it that when you need something you can’t find it, but when you don’t …), but this was the first one I found and used to solve my frustration.

Speaking of old versions of Windows, I have actually seen, and used for all of 2.5 minutes, a PC running Windows 1.0, and this was in a Pharmacy in Australia, which had a stack of 10 or so PCs for sale in the middle of the store.  Windows 1.0 did not allow for overlapping Windows.  I still can’t believe believe it to this day.

Using WinSnap: Taking pictures of the screen

Frustrated with taking pictures of the screen using the standard PrntScrn and Alt-PrntScrn keys?

Ever tried to take a picture of the Alt-Tab open applications box? Check this out:

Alt-Tab dialog

What about those applications which don’t have straight line borders?

Any shape of application

What about a picture of an application, and just the application, with the menus displayed? You can’t use Alt-PrntScrn as the Alt makes the menus disappear.

Notepad application with menu displayed

What about just the menu?

Notepad menu only

What about just some random region of the screen, without needing to use a picture editing application? The system tray:

System Tray

Or just the notification icons:

Notifications Icons

What about just a little piece of an application?

Minesweeper region

Well, all this is done by WinSnap, an application created by Alexander Avdonin, and you can check out information from his Web site at http://www.ntwind.com/.

And once you start using it, your documents and presentations will look more polished and you will think “how did I survive without it”.

Here is how each of the above was done:

• Alt-Tab open applications box – Region capture (Ctrl-Alt-PrintScreen) mode with 5 second delay to allow you to display the Alt-Tab open applications box and then select the top left and bottom right points of the region to be captured.
• Skinned application – Application capture (Ctrl-PrintScreen) mode.
• Notepad with menus – Application capture (Ctrl-PrintScreen) mode with 5 second delay to allow you to display the menu.
• Notepad menu – Menu capture (Win-Ctrl-PrintScreen) mode.
• System Tray – Object capture (Shift-Ctrl-PrintScreen) mode and select the system tray.
• Notification icons – Object capture (Shift-Ctrl-PrintScreen) mode and select the notification icons.
• Portion of Minesweeper – Region caption (Ctrl-Alt-PrintScreen) and select top left and bottom right points of the region to be captured.

Finding information on the Web: Visible vs. Invisible Web

The Internet is the first place most researchers turn to because of its sheer size and content; ironically, the size of the Internet is also the reason many researchers are slowly losing their minds.

Searching for information on the Web is a time sucker; you begin your search, look up at the clock and realize three hours have passed since you first hit the enter key. This is partly due to writers being a curious lot and going off on tangents; it is also due to reliable, useful, and relevant information being difficult to find. You don’t want to stop being curious, but you do want to start finding accurate information. To work out where to start your search, you need to know the difference between the Visible Web and the Invisible, or Deep Web.

The difference between the Visible Web and the Invisible Web

The Visible Web is made up of pages that search engine spiders can crawl and index. The Invisible Web is made up of pages that spiders cannot get into for various reasons; however, it is two to three times the size of the Visible Web. So if you think Google has a lot of information, just wait until you see this.

Where to begin the search

Before you start your search you need to decide where to search. You basically have three options; search engines, subject directories and the Invisible Web. Here is a brief description of each; you can find links to subject directories and Invisible Websites in the blogwell toolbox.

Search engines

Search engines like Google, Yahoo!, and Live have minimal human supervision; data is compiled by robots (a.k.a spiders and crawlers) that crawl the Web for information.

These are best if your topic is narrow; the more specific your search request, the more relevant the results.

Subject directories

Subject directories are organized into categories by people, not robots, so the quantity of information is not as great as that of search engines. However, depending on the directory, the information is generally of a higher quality than search engine results. *

Use subject directories if your topic is broad and you have the time to browse.

The Invisible Web

The Invisible Web is home to thousands of searchable databases that search engines cannot access. This is because these sites need some type of human interaction; you need to do something on the home page, that search engine spiders are incapable of doing.

For instance, to access the Lexis Nexis database, you need to type in a password, or to access the Librarians Internet Index you need to type in a search query (LII is both visible and invisible). Sadly, spiders are not quite bright enough to do this…yet.

You can find a list of my favorite subject directories and Invisible Web databases in the blogwell toolbox.

If you are interested in reading more about the Invisible Web, take a look at:

Invisible or Deep Web: What it is, Why it exists, How to find it, and its inherent ambiguity

Those Dark Hiding Places: The Invisible Web Revealed

Deep Web at Wikipedia

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